EXPERIENCE OF DYING

“A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his physical body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a “body”, but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before – a being of light – appears before him. This being asks him a question, non verbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to the earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.

Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still, the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life.”

INEFFABILITY

“Now, there is a real problem for me as I'm trying to tell you this, because all the words I know are three-dimensional. As I was going through this, I kept thinking, “Well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more.” And of course our world – the one we're living in now – is three-dimensional, but the next one definitely isn't. And that's why it's so hard to tell you this. I have to describe it to you in words that are three-dimensional. That's as close as I can get to it, but it's not really adequate. I can't really give you a complete picture.”

HEARING THE NEWS

“I was in a hospital but they didn't know what was wrong with me. So Dr. James, my doctor, sent me downstairs to the radiologist for a liver scan so they could find out. First, they tested this drug they were going to use on my arm, since I had a lot of drug allergies. But there was no reaction, so they went ahead. When they used it this time, I arrested on them. I heard the radiologist who was working on me go over to the telephone, and I heard very clearly as he dialed it. I heard him say, “Dr. James, I have killed your patient, Mrs. Martin.” And I knew I wasn't dead. I tried to move or to let them know, but I couldn't. When they were trying to resuscitate me, I could hear them telling how many c.c.'s of something to give me, but I didn't feel the needles going in. I felt nothing at all when they touched me.”

○○○

“Suddenly, I was gripped by squeezing chest pains, just as though as iron ban had been clamped quickly around the middle part of my chest and tightened. My husband and a friend of ours heard me fall and came running in to help me. I found myself in a deep blackness and thought it I heard my husband, as if he were at a great distance, saying, “This is it, this time!” And my thoughts were, “Yes, it is.””

○○○

“A woman patient of mine had a cardiac arrest just before another surgeon and I were to operate on her. I was right there, and I saw her pupils dilate. We tried for some time to resuscitate her, but weren't having any success, so I thought she was gone. I told the other doctor who was working with me, “Let's try one more time and then we we'll give up.” This time, we got her heart beating, and she came around. Later I asked her what she remembered of her “death”. She said she didn't remember much about it, except that she did hear me say, “Let's try one more time and then we we'll give up.””

FEELINGS OF PEACE AND QUIET

“At the point of injury there was a momentary flash of pain, but then all the pain vanished. I had the feeling of floating in a dark space. The day was bitterly cold, yet while I was in that blackness all I felt was warmth and the most extreme comfort I have ever experienced... I remember thinking, “I must be dead.””

○○○

“I began to experience the most wonderful feelings. I couldn't feel a thing in the world except peace, comfort, ease – just quietness. I felt that all my troubles were gone, and I thought to myself, “Well how quiet and peaceful, and I don't hurt at all.””

○○○

“I just had a nice, great feeling of solitude and peace... It was beautiful, and I was at such peace in my mind.”

○○○

“A great attitude of relief. There was no pain, and I've never felt so relaxed. I was at ease and it was all good.”

THE NOISE

“I would hear what seemed to be bells tingling, a long way off, as if drifting through the wind. They sounded like Japanese wind bells... That was the only sound I could hear at times.”

THE DARK TUNNEL

“This happened to me when I was a little boy – nine years old. That was twenty-seven years ago, but it was so striking that I have never forgotten it. One afternoon I became very sick, and they rushed me to the nearest hospital. When I arrived they decided they were going to have to put me to sleep, but why I don't know, because I was too young. Back in those days they used ether. They gave it to me by putting a cloth over my nose, and when they did, I was told afterwards, my heart stopped beating. I didn't know at that time that that was exactly what happened to me, but anyway when this happened I had an experience. Well, the first thing that happened – now I am going to describe it just the way I felt – was that I had this ringing noise brrrnnng-brrrnnng-brrrnnng, very rhythmic. Then I was moving through this – you're going to think this is weird -  through this long dark place. It seemed like a sewer or something. I just can't describe it to you. I was moving, beating all the time with this noise, this ringing noise.”

○○○

“I had a very bad allergic reaction to a local anesthetic, and I just quit breathing -  I had a respiratory arrest. The first thing that happened – it was real quick – was that I went through this dark, black vacuum at super speed. You could compare it to a coaster train at an amusement park, going through this tunnel at a tremendous speed.”

○○○

“I was in an utterly black, dark void. It is very difficult to explain, but I felt as if I were moving in a vacuum, just through blackness. Yet, I was quite conscious. It was like being in a cylinder which had no air in it. It was a feeling of limbo, of being half-way here, and half-way somewhere else.”

○○○

“I stayed in shock for about a week, and during that time all of a sudden I just escaped into this dark void. It seemed that I stayed there for a long time just floating and tumbling through space... I was so taken up with this void that I just didn't think of anything else.”

○○○

“I had the feeling that I was moving through a deep, very dark valley. The darkness was so deep and impenetrable that I could see absolutely nothing but this was the most wonderful, worry-free experience you can imagine.”

○○○

“My doctor had already called my brother and sister in to see me for the last time.  The nurse gave me a shot to help me die more easily. The things around me in a hospital began to go further and further away. As they receded, I entered head first into a narrow and very, very dark passageway. I seemed to just fit inside of it. I began to slide down, down, down.”

○○○

“There was a feeling of utter peace and quiet, no fear at all, and I found myself in a tunnel -  a tunnel of concentric circles. Shortly after that, I saw a T.V. Program called The Time Tunnel, where people go back in time through this spiralling tunnel. Well, that's the closest thing to it that I can think of.”

○○○

“Suddenly, I was in a very dark, very deep valley. It was as though there was a pathway, almost a road, through the valley, and I was going down the path... Later, after I was well, the thought came to me, “Well, now I know what the Bible means by the 'the valley of shadow of death,' because I've been there.””

OUT OF THE BODY

“I was seventeen years old and my brother and I were working at an amusement park. One afternoon, we decided to go swimming, and there were quite a few of the other young people who went in with us. Someone said, “Let's swim across the lake.” I had done that on numerous occasions, but that day for some reason, I went down, almost in the middle of the lake... I kept bobbling up and down, and all of a sudden, it felt as though I were away from my body, away from everybody, in space by myself. Although I was stable, staying at the same level, I saw my body in the water about three or four feet away, bobbling up and down. I viewed my body from the back and slightly to the right side. I still felt as though I had an entire body form, even while I was outside my body. I had an airy feeling that's almost indescribable. I felt like a feather.”

○○○

“About a year ago, I was admitted to the hospital with heart trouble, and the next morning, lying in the hospital bed, I began to have a very severe pain in my chest. I pushed the button beside the bed to call for the nurses, and they came in and started working on me. I was quite uncomfortable lying on my back so I turned over, and as I did I quit breathing and my heart stopped beating. Just then, I heard the nurses shout, “Code pink! Code pink!” As they were saying this, I could feel myself moving out of my body and sliding down between the mattress and the rail on the side of the bed -  actually it seemed as if I went through the rail – on down to the floor. Then, I started rising upward, slowly. On my way up, I saw more nurses come running into the room – there must have been a dozen of them. My doctor happened to be making his rounds in the hospital so they called him and I saw him come in, too. I thought, “I wonder what he's doing here.” I drifted on up past the light fixture – I saw it from the side and very distinctly  - and then I stopped, floating right below the ceiling, looking down. I felt almost as though I were a piece of paper that someone had blown up to the ceiling.

I watched them reviving me from up there! My body was lying down there stretched out on the bed, in plain view, and they were all standing around it. I heard one nurse say, “Oh, my God! She's gone!,” while another one leaned down to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I was looking at the back of her head while she did this. I'll never forget the way her hair looked; it was cut kind of short. Just then I saw them roll this machine in there, and they put the shocks on my chest. When they did, I saw my whole body crack and pop. It was the most awful thing!

As I saw them below beating on my chest and rubbing my arms and legs, I thought, “Why are they going to so much trouble? I'm just fine now.””

○○○

“It was about two years ago, and I had just turned nineteen. I was driving a friend of mine home in my car, and as I got to this particular intersection down town, I stopped and looked both ways, but I didn't see a thing coming. I pulled on out into the intersection and as I did I heard my friend yell at the top of his voice. When I looked I saw a blinding light, the headlights of a car that was speeding towards us. I heard this awful sound – the side of the car being crushed in – and there was just an instant during which I seemed to be going through a darkness, an enclosed space. It was very quick. Then, I was sort of floating about five feet above the street, about five yards away from the car, I'd say, and I heard echo of the crash dying away. I saw people come running up and crowding around the car, and I saw my friend get out of the car, obviously in shock. I could see my own body in the wreckage among all those people, and could see them trying to get it out. My legs were all twisted and there was blood all over the place.”

○○○

“I became very seriously ill, and the doctor put me in the hospital. This one morning a solid gray mist gathered around me, and I left my body. I had a floating sensation as I felt myself get out of my body, and I looked back and I could see myself on the bed below and there was no fear. It was quiet – very peaceful and serene. I was not in the least bit upset or frightened. It was just a tranquil feeling, and it was something which I didn't dread. I felt that maybe I was dying, and I felt that if I did not get back to my body, I would be dead, gone.”

○○○

“This is sort of funny, I know, but in nursing school they had tried to drill it into us that we ought to donate our bodies to science. Well, all through this, as I watched them trying to start my breathing again, I kept thinking, “I don't want them to use that body as a cadaver.””

○○○

“At one time – now, I know I was lying on the bed there – but I could actually see the bed and the doctor working on me. I couldn't understand it, but I looked at my own body lying there on the bed. And I felt real bad when I looked at my body and saw how badly it was messed up.”

○○○

“Boy, I sure didn't realize that I looked like that! You know, I'm only used to seeing myself in pictures or from the front in a mirror and both of those look flat. But all of a sudden there I – or my body – was and I could see it. I could definitely see it, full view, from about five feet away. It took me a few moments to recognize myself.”

○○○

“I didn't look back at my body at all. Oh, I knew it was there, all right, and I could've seen it had I looked. But I didn't want to look, not in the least, because I knew that I had done my best in my life, and I was turning my attention now to this other realm of things. I felt that to look back at my body would be to look back at the past, and I was determined not to do that.”

○○○

“I could see my own body all tangled up in the car among all the people who had gathered around, but, you know, I had no feelings for it whatsoever. It was like it was a completely different human, or maybe even just an object... I knew it was my body but I had no feelings for it.”

○○○

“I thought I was dead, and I wasn't sorry that I was dead, but I just couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go. My thought and my consciousness were just like they are in life, but I just couldn't figure all this out. I kept thinking, “Where am I going to go? What am I going to do?” and “My God, I'm dead! I can't believe it!” Because you never really believe, I don't think, fully that you're going to die. It's always something that's going to happen to other person, and although you know it you really never believe it deep down... And so I decided I was just going to wait until all the excitement died down and they carried my body away, and try to see if I could figure out where to go from there.”

○○○

“I saw them resuscitating me. It was really strange. I wasn't very high; it was almost like I was on a pedestal, but not above them to any great extent, just maybe looking over them. I tried talking to them but nobody could hear me, nobody would listen to me.”

○○○

“The doctors and nurses were pounding on my body to try to get IV's started and to get me back, and I kept trying to tell them, “Leave me alone. All I want is to be left alone. Quit pounding on me.” But they didn't hear me. So I tried to move their hands to keep them from beating on my body, but nothing would happen. I couldn't get anywhere. It was like – I don't really know what happened, but I couldn't move their hands. It looked like I was touching their hands and I tried to move them – yet when I would give it to the stroke, their hands were still there. I don't know whether my hand was going through it, around it, or what. I didn't feel any pressure against their hands when I was trying to move them.”

○○○

“People were walking up from all directions to get to the wreck. I could see them, and I was in the middle of a very narrow walkway. Anyway, as they came by they wouldn't seem to notice me. They would just keep walking with their eyes straight ahead. As they came real close, I would try to turn around, to get out of their way, but they would just walk through me.”

○○○

“I lost control of my car on a curve, and the car left the road and went into the air, and I remember seeing a blue sky and I saw that the car was going down into a ditch. At the time the car left the road, I said to myself “I'm in an accident.” At the point, I kind of lost my sense of time, and I lost my physical reality as far as my body is concerned – I lost touch with my body. My being or my self or my spirit, or whatever you would like to label it – I could sort of feel it rise out of me, out through my head. And it wasn't anything that hurt, it was just sort of like a lifting and it being above me...

[“My being”] felt as if it had a density to it, almost, but not a physical density – kind of like, I don't know, waves or something, I guess: Nothing really physical, almost as if it were charged, if you'd like to call it that. But it felt as if it had something to it... It was small, and it felt as if it were sort of circular, with no rigid outlines to it. You could liken it to a cloud... It almost seemed as if it were in its own encasement...

As it went out of my body, it seemed that a large end left first, and the small end last... It was a very light feeling – very. There was no strain on my [physical] body; the feeling was totally separate. My body had no weight...

The most striking point of the whole experience was the moment when my being was suspended above the front part of my head. It was almost like it was trying to decide whether it wanted to leave or to stay. It seemed then as though time were standing still. And the first and the last of the accident, everything moved so fast, but at this one particular time, sort of in between, as my being was suspended above me and the car was going over the embankment, it seemed that it took the car a long time to get there, and in that time I really wasn't too involved with the car or the accident or my own body – only with my mind...

My being had no physical characteristics, but I have to describe it with physical terms. I could describe it in so many ways, in so many words, but none of them would be exactly right. It's so hard to describe.

Finally, the car did hit the ground and it rolled over, but my only injuries were a sprained neck and a bruised foot.”

○○○

“[When I came out of the physical body] it was like I did come out of my body and go into something else. I didn't think I was just nothing. It was another body... but not another regular human body. It's a little bit different. It was not exactly like a human body, but it wasn't any big glob matter, either. It had form to it, but no colors. And I know I still had something you could call hands.

I can't describe it. I was more fascinated with everything around me – seeing my own body there, and all – so I didn't think about the type of body I was in. And all this seemed to go so quickly. Time wasn't really an element – and yet it was. Things seem to go faster after you get out of your body.”

○○○

“I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the next few hours were the critical period. During that time, I kept getting in and out of my physical body, but something I can best describe as an energy pattern. If I had to put it into words, I would say that it was transparent, a spiritual as opposed to a material being. Yet, it definitely had different parts.”

○○○

“When my heart stopped beating... I felt like I was a round ball and almost maybe like I might have been a little sphere – like a B-B – on the inside of this round ball. I just can't describe it to you.”

○○○

“I was out of my body looking at it from about ten yards away, but I was still thinking, just like in physical life. And where I was thinking was about at my normal bodily height. I wasn't in a body, as such. I could feel something, some kind of a – like a capsule, or something, like a clear form. I couldn't really see it; it was like it was transparent, but not really. It was like I was just there – an energy, maybe, sort of like just a little ball of energy. And I really wasn't aware of any bodily sensation – temperature, or anything like that.”

○○○

“Things that are not possible now, are then. Your mind is so clear. It's so nice. My mind just took everything down and worked everything out for me the first time, without having to go through it more than once. After a while everything I was experiencing got to where it meant something to me in some way.”

○○○

“There was a lot of action going on, and people running around the ambulance. And whenever I would look at a person to wonder what they were thinking, it was like a zoom-up, exactly like through a zoom lens, and I was there. But it seemed that part of me – I'll call it my mind – was still where I had wanted to see someone at a distance, it seemed like part of me, kind of like a tracer, would go to that person. And it seemed to me at the time that if something happened anyplace in the world that I could just be there.”

○○○

“I could see people all around, and I could understand what they were saying. I didn't hear them, audibly, like I'm hearing you. It was more like knowing what they were thinking, exactly what they were thinking, but only in my mind, not in their actual vocabulary. I would catch it the second before they opened their mouths to speak.”

○○○

“I could feel my body, and it was whole. I know that. I felt whole, and I felt that all of me was there, though it wasn't.”

○○○

“My experience, all the things that I was going through, where so beautiful, but just indescribable. I wanted others to be there with me to see it, too, and I had the feeling that I would never be able to describe to anyone what I was seeing. I had the feeling of being lonesome because I wanted somebody to be there to experience it with me. But I knew nobody else could be there. I felt that I was in a private world at that time. I really felt a fit of depression then.”

○○○

“I was unable to touch anything, unable to communicate with any of the people around. It is an awesome, lonely feeling, a feeling of complete isolation. I knew that I was completely alone, by myself.”

○○○

“I was just amazed. I couldn't believe that it was happening. I wasn't really concerned or worried like “oh, no, I'm dead and my parents are left behind and they'll be sad and I'll never see them again.” Nothing like that ever entered my mind.

I was aware the whole time of being alone, though, very alone – almost like I was a visitor from some place else. It was like all relations were cut. I know – it was like there was no love or anything. Everything was just so – technical. I don't understand, really.”

MEETING OTHERS

“I had this experience when I was giving birth to a child. The delivery was very difficult, and I lost a lot of blood. The doctor gave me up, and told my relatives that I was dying. However, I was quite alert through the while thing, and even as I heard him saying this I felt myself coming to. As I did, I realized that all these people were there, almost in multitudes it seems, hovering around the ceiling of the room. They were all people I had known in my past life, but who had passed on before. I recognized my grandmother and a girl I had known when I was in school, and many other relatives and friends. It seems that I mainly saw their faces and felt their presence.  They all seemed pleased.  It was a very happy occasion, and I felt that they had come to protect or to guide me. It was almost as if I were coming home, and they were there to greet or to welcome me. All this time, I had the feeling of everything light and beautiful. It was a beautiful and glorious moment.”

○○○

“Several weeks before I nearly died, a good friend of mine, Bob, had been killed. Now the moment I got out of my body I had the feeling that Bob was standing there, right next to me. I could see him in my mind and felt like he was there, but it was strange. I didn't see him as his physical body. I could see things, but not in the physical form, yet just as clearly, his looks, everything. Does that make sense? He was there but he didn't have a physical body. It was kind of like a clear body, and I could sense every part of it – arms, legs, and so on – but I wasn't seeing it physically. I didn't think about it being odd at the time because I didn't really need to see him with my eyes. I didn't have eyes, anyway.

I kept asking him, “Bob, where do I go now? What has happened? Am I dead or not?” And he never answered me, never said a word. But, often, while I was in the hospital, he would be there, and I would ask him again, “What's going on?”, but never any answer. And then the day the doctors said “He's going to live,” he left. I didn't see him again and didn't feel his presence. It was almost as though he were waiting until I passed that final frontier and then he would tell me, would give me the details on what was going on.”

○○○

“I heard a voice, not a man's voice, but like a hearing beyond the physical senses, telling me what I had to do – go back – and I felt no fear of getting back into my physical body.”

○○○

“While I was dead, in this void, I talked to people – and yet, I really couldn't say that I talked to any bodily people. Yet, I had the feeling that there were people around me, and I could feel their presence, and could feel them moving, though I could never see anyone. Every now and then, I would talk with one of them, but I couldn't see them. And whenever I wondered what was going on, I would always get a thought back from one of them, that everything was all right, that I was dying but would be fine. So, my condition never worried me. I always got an answer back for every question that I asked. They didn't leave my mind void.”

THE BEING OF LIGHT

“The first thing he said to me was, that he kind of asked me if I was ready to die, or what I had done with my life that I wanted to show him.”

○○○

“The voice asked me a question: “Is it worth it?” And what it meant was, did the kind of the life I had been leading up to that point seem worth-while to me then, knowing what I then knew.”

○○○

“I heard the doctors say that I was dead, and that's when I began to feel as though I were tumbling, actually kind of floating, through this blackness, which was some kind of enclosure. There are not really words to describe this. Everything was very black, except that, way off from me, I could see this light. It was a very, very brilliant light, but not too large at first. It grew larger as I came nearer and nearer to it.

I was trying to get to that light, at the end, because I felt that it was Christ, and I was trying to reach that point. It was not frightening experience. It was more or less a pleasant thing. For immediately, being a Christian, I had connected the light with Christ, who said, “I am the light of the world.” I said to myself, “If this is it, if I am to die, then I know who waits for me at the end, there in that light.””

○○○

“I got up and walked into the hall to go to get a drink, and it was at that point as they found out later, that my appendix ruptured. I became very weak, and I fell down. I began to feel a sort of drifting, a movement of my real being in and out of my body, and to hear beautiful music. I floated on down the hall and out the door onto the screened-in porch. There, it almost seemed that clouds, a pink mist really, began to gather around me, and then I floated right straight on through the screen, just as though it weren't there, and up into this pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant, but it didn't hurt my eyes. It's not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn't actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love.

The thought came to my mind, “Lovest thou me?” This was not exactly in the form of a question, but I guess the connotation of what the light said was, “If you do love me, go back and complete what you began in your life.” And all during this time, I felt as though I were surrounded by an overwhelming love and compassion.”

○○○

“I knew I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it, because no one could hear me... I was out of my body, there's no doubt about it, because I could see my own body there on the operating room table. My soul was out! All this made me feel very bad at first, but then, this really bright light came. It did seem that it was a little dim at first, but then it was this huge beam. It was just a tremendous amount of light, nothing like a big bright flash-light, it was just too much of light. And it gave off heat to me; I felt warm sensation.

It was a bright yellowish white – more white. It was tremendously bright; I just can't describe it. It seemed that it covered everything, yet it didn't prevent me from seeing everything around me – the operating room, the doctors and nurses, everything. I could see clearly, and it wasn't blinding.

At first, when the light came, I wasn't sure what was happening, but then, it asked, it kind of asked me if I was ready to die. It was like talking to a person, but a person wasn't there. The light's what was talking to me, but in a voice.

Now, I think that the voice that was talking to me actually realized that I wasn't ready to die. You know, it was just kind of testing me more than anything else. Yet, from the moment the light spoke to me, I felt really good – secure and loved. The love which came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable. It was a fun person to be with! And it had a sense of humor, too – definitely!”

THE REVIEW

“When the light appeared, the first thing he said to me was “What do you have to show me that you've done with your life?,” or something to this effect. And that's when these flashbacks started. I thought, “Gee, what is going on?,” because, all of a sudden, I was back early in my childhood. And from then on, it was like I was walking from the time of my very early life, on through each year of my life, right up to the present.

It was really strange where it started, too, when I was a little girl, playing down by the creek in our neighbourhood, and there were other scenes from about that time – experiences I had had with my sister, and things about neighbourhood people, and actual places I had been. And then I was in kindergarten, and I remember the time when I had this one toy I really liked, I broke it and I cried for a long time. This was a really traumatic experience for me. The images continued on through my life and I remember when I was in Girl Scouts and went camping, and remembered many things about all the years of grammar school. Then, when I was in junior high school, it was a really big honor to be chosen from the scholastic achievement society, and I remembered when I was chosen. So, I went on through junior high, and then senior high school, and graduation, and up through my first few years of college, up to where I was then.

The things that flashed back came in the order of my life, and they were so vivid. The scenes were just like you walked outside and saw them, completely three-dimensional, and in color. And they moved. For instance, when I saw myself breaking the toy, I could see all the movements. It wasn't like I was watching it all from my perspective at the time. It was like the little girl I saw was somebody else, in a movie, one little girl among all the other children out there playing on the playground. Yet, it was me. I saw myself doing these things, as a child, and they were the exact same things I had done, because I remember them.

Now, I didn't actually see the light as I was going through the flashbacks. He disappeared as soon as he asked me what I had done, and the flashbacks started, and yet I knew that he was there with me the whole time, that he carried me back through the flashbacks, because I felt his presence, and because he made comments here and there. He was trying to show me something in each of these flashbacks. It's not like he was trying to see what I had done – he knew already – but he was picking out these certain flashbacks of my life and putting them in front of me so that I would have to recall them.

All through this, he kept stressing the importance of love. The places where he showed it best involved my sister; I have always been very close to her. He showed me some instances where I had been selfish to my sister, but then just as many times where I had really shown love to her and had shared with her. He pointed out to me that I should try to do things for other people, to try my best. There wasn't any accusation in any of this, though. When he came across times when I had been selfish, his attitude was only that I had been learning from them, too.

He seemed very interested in things concerning knowledge, too. He kept on pointing out things that had to do with learning, and he did say that I was going to continue learning, and he said that even when he comes back for me (because by this time he had told me that I was going back) that there will always be a quest for knowledge. He said that it is a continuous process, so I got the feeling that it goes on after death. I think that he was trying to teach me, as we went through those flashbacks.

The whole thing was really odd. I was there; I was actually seeing these flashbacks; I was actually walking through them, and it was so fast. Yet, it was slow enough that I could take it all in. Still, the time span wasn't all that large, I don't believe. It just seemed that the light came, and then I went through these flashbacks, and the light came back. It s that it was less than five minutes, and probably more than thirty seconds, but I can't really tell you.

The only time I felt scared was when I was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to finish my life here. But I enjoyed going through this flashback. That was fun. I had a good time going back to my childhood, almost like I was reliving it. It was a way of going back and seeing it which you ordinarily just can't do.”

○○○

“After all this banging and going through this long, dark place, all of my childhood thoughts, my whole entire life was there at the end of this tunnel, just flashing in front of me. It was not exactly in terms of pictures, more in the form of thought, I guess. I can't exactly describe it to you, but it was just all there. It was just all there at once, I mean, was everything, everything at one time. I thought about my mother, about things that I had done wrong. After I could see the mean little things I did as a child, and thought about my mother and father, I wished that I hadn't done these things, and I wished I could go back and undo them.”

○○○

“The whole situation developed very suddenly. I had had a slight fever and had not felt well for about two weeks, but this night I rapidly became very ill and I felt much worse. I was lying in bed, and I remember trying to reach over to my wife and say that I was very sick, but I found it impossible to move. Beyond that, I found myself in a completely black void, and my whole life kind of flashed in front of me. It started back when I was six or seven years old, and I remembered a good friend I had in grammar school. I went from grammar school to high school to college, then to dental school, and then right on into practising dentistry.

I knew I was dying, and I remember thinking that I wanted to provide for my family. I was distraught that I was dying and yet that there were certain things that I had done in my life that I regretted, and other things that I regretted that I had left undone.

This flashback was in the form of mental pictures, I would say, but they much more vivid than normal ones. I saw only the high points, but it was so rapid it was like looking through a volume of my entire life and being able to do it within seconds. It just flashed before me like a motion picture that goes tremendously fast, yet I was fully able to see it, and able to comprehend it. Still, the emotions didn't come back with the pictures, because there wasn't enough time.

I didn't see anything else during this experience. There was just blackness, except for the images I saw. Yet, I definitely felt the presence of a very powerful, completely loving being there with me all through this experience.

It is really interesting. When I recovered, I could tell everyone about every part of my life, in great detail, because of what I had been through. It's quite an experience, but it's difficult to put into words, because it happens so rapidly, yet it's so clear.”

○○○

“While I was serving in Vietnam, I received wounds, and I later “died” from them, yet through it all I knew exactly what was going on. I was hit with six rounds of machine gun fire, and as it happened I wasn't upset at all. In my mind, I actually felt relieved when I was wounded. I felt completely at ease, and it was not frightening.

At the point of impact, my life began to become a picture in front of me, and it seemed that I could go back to the time when I was still a baby, and the pictures seemed to progress through my whole life.

I could remember everything; everything was so vivid. It was so clear in front of me. It shot right by me from the earliest things I can remember right on up to the present, and it all happened within a short time. Ant it was not anything bad at all; I went through it with no regrets, no derogatory feelings about myself at all.

The best thing I can think of to compare it to is a series of pictures; like slides. It was just like someone was clicking off slides in front of me, very quickly.”

○○○

“The summer after my first year in college, I took a job driving a large semi-tractor-trailer truck. I had a problem that summer with falling asleep behind the wheel. Early one morning I was driving a truck on a long trip, and I was nodding. The last thing I remember was seeing a road sign, and then I dozed off, and the next thing I knew, I heard an awful scraping and the right outside tire blew out, and then because of the weight and sway of the truck the left tires blew out, and the truck turned over on it's side and went skidding down the road towards a bridge. I was scared because I knew what was happening. I knew the truck was going to hit the bridge.

Now, during the period of time that the truck was skidding, I just thought of all the things that I had done. I only saw certain things, the high points, and it was such a real thing. The first thing I remembered was following my father as he walked along the breach; it was when I was two years old. And there were a few other things, in order, from my early years, and after that I remembered breaking my new red wagon I had gotten for Christmas when I was five. I remember crying as I went to school in the first grade, wearing that gaudy yellow raincoat my mother had bought me. I remembered a little something about each one of my years in grammar school. I remember each of my teachers, and a little something that stood out about each year. Then I went to junior high, and got a paper rout, and went to work in a grocery store, and it brought me up to right then, just before beginning my second year in college.

All these things, and many others, just flashed across my mind, and it was very quick. It probably didn't last but a split second. And then it was all over and I was standing there looking at the truck, and I thought I was dead, I thought I was an angel. I started pinching myself to see if I was alive, or a ghost, or what.

The truck was a total wreck, but I didn't receive a scratch. Somehow, I had jumped out the front windshield, because all the glass was blown out. After things calmed down, I thought it was strange that these things that had happened in my life, that had made some sort of lasting impression on me, had gone through my mind during this moment of crisis. I could probably think of all those things and remember and picture each of them now, but it would probably take me at least fifteen minutes. Yet, this had all come at once, automatically, and in less than a second. It was amazing.”

THE BORDER OR LIMIT

“I “died” from a cardiac arrest, and, as I did, I suddenly found myself in a rolling field. It was beautiful, and everything was an intense green – a color unlike anything on earth. There was light – beautiful, uplifting light – all around me. I looked ahead of me, across the field, and I saw a fence. I started moving towards the fence, and I saw a man on the other side of it, moving towards it as if to meet me. I wanted to reach him, but I felt myself being drawn back, irresistibly. As I did, I saw him, too, turn around and go back in the other direction, away from the fence.”

○○○

“This experience took place during the birth of my first child. About eighth month of my pregnancy, I developed what my doctor described as a toxic condition and advised me to enter the hospital where he could force labour. It was immediately after delivery that I had a severe haemorrhage and the doctor had a difficult time controlling it. I was aware of what was happening as, having been a nurse myself, I realized the danger. At this time, I lost consciousness, and heard an annoying buzzing, ringing sound. The next thing I knew it seemed as if I were on a ship or a small vessel sailing to the other side of a large body of water. On the distant shore, I could see all of my loved ones who had died – my mother, my father, my sister, and others. I could see them, could see their faces, just as they were when I knew them on earth. They seemed to be beckoning me to come one over, and all the while I was saying, “No, no, I'm not ready to join you. I don't want to die. I'm not ready to go.”

Now, this was the strangest experience because all this time I could see all the doctors and nurses, too, as they worked on my body, but it seemed as if I were a spectator rather than that person – that body – they were working on. I was trying so hard to get through to my doctor, “I'm not going to die,” but no one could hear me. Everything – the doctors, the nurses, the delivery room, the ship, the water, and the far shore – was just sort of a conglomerate. It was all together, as if one scene were superimposed right on top of the other.

Finally, the ship almost reached the far shore, but just before it did, it turned around and started back. I did finally get through to my doctor, and I was saying, “I'm not going to die.” It was at this point, I guess, that I came around, and the doctor explained what had happened, that I had had a post-partum haemorrhage, and that they had nearly lost me, but that I was going to be all right.”

○○○

“I was hospitalized for a severe kidney condition, and I was in a coma for approximately a week. My doctors were extremely uncertain as to whether I would live. During this period when I was unconscious, I felt as though I were lifted right up, just as though I didn't have a physical body at all. All brilliant white light appeared to me. The light was so bright that I could not see through it, but going into its presence was so calming and so wonderful. There is just no experience on earth like it. In the presence of the light, the thoughts or words came into my mind: “Do you want to die?”And I replied that I didn't know since I knew nothing about death. Then the white light said, “Come over this line and you will learn.” I felt that I knew where the line was in front of me, although I could not actually see it. As I went across the line, the most wonderful feelings came over me – feelings of peace, tranquility, a vanishing of all worries.”

○○○

“I had a heart attack, and I found myself in a black void, and I knew I had left my physical body behind. I knew I was dying, and I thought,”God, I did the best I knew how at the time I did it. Please help me.” Immediately, I was moved out of that blackness, through a pale gray, and I just went on, gliding and moving swiftly, and in front of me, in the distance, I could see a gray mist, and I was rushing toward it. It seemed that I just couldn't get to it fast enough to satisfy me, and as I got closer to it I could see through it. Beyond the mist, I could see people, and their forms were just like they are on the earth, and I could also see something which one could take to the buildings. The whole thing was permeated with the most gorgeous light – a living, golden yellow glow, a pale color, not like the harsh gold color we know on earth.

As I approached more closely, I felt certain that I was going through that mist. It was such a wonderful, joyous feeling; there are just no words in human language to describe it. Yet, it wasn't my time to go through the mist, because instantly from the other side appeared my Uncle Carl, who had died many years earlier. He blocked my path, saying, “Go back. Your work on earth has not been completed. Go back now.” I didn't want to go back, but I had no choice, and immediately I was back in my body. I felt that horrible pain in my chest, and I heard my little boy crying, “God, bring my mommy back to me.””

○○○

“I was taken to the hospital for a critical condition they said was an “inflammation” and my doctor said I wasn't going to make it. He told my relatives to come because I wasn't going to be here much longer. They came, and gathered around my bed, and as a doctor thought I was dying, my relatives looked like they were going farther away from me. It looked like they were going back instead of me going away from them. It got dimmer and dimmer, but I saw them. I lost consciousness and I didn't seem to know anything else about what was going on in the hospital room, but I was in a narrow, v-shaped passage, like a trough, about the width of this chair. It just fit my body, and my hands and arms seemed to be down at my side. I went head first, and it was dark, dark as it could be in there. I moved on through it, downward, and I looked up and saw a beautiful, polished door, with no knob. Around the edges of the door I could see a really brilliant light, with rays just streaming like everybody was so happy in there, and reeling around, moving around. It seemed like it was awfully busy there. I looked up and said, “Lord, here I am. If you want me, take me.” Boy, he shot me back so fast it felt like I almost lost my breath.”

COMING BACK

“I wondered whether I should stay there, but as I did I remembered my family, my three children and my husband. Now, this is the part that is hard to get across: When I had this wonderful feelings, there in the presence of that light, I really didn't want to come back. But I take my responsibilities very seriously, and I knew that I had a duty to my family. So I decided to try to come back.”

○○○

“I had completed three years of college and had only one more year to go. I kept thinking, “I don't want to die now.” But I feel that if this had gone on just a few minutes more, if I had been with this light for just a little while longer, I wouldn't have thought of my education anymore, that I would've been taken up with the other things I was experiencing.”

○○○

“I was out of my body, and I realized that I had to make a decision. I knew that I could not stay out of my physical body for a very long period of time so – well, for others this is very hard to understand, but for me then it was perfectly clear – I knew that I had to decide whether to move on out or to get back in.

It was wonderful over there on the other side, and I kind of wanted to stay. But knowing that I had something good to do on earth was just a wonderful in a way. So, I was thinking, “Yes, I must go back and live,” and I got back into my physical body. I almost feel as though I stopped the bleeding myself. At any rate, I began to recover after that.”

○○○

“I was above the table, and I could see everything they were doing. I knew that I was dying, that this would be it. Yet, I was concerned about my children, about who would take care of them. So, I was not ready to go. The Lord permitted me to live.”

○○○

“I say God surely was good to me, because I was dead, and he let the doctors bring me back, for a purpose. The purpose was to help my wife, I think, because she had a drinking problem, and I know that she just couldn't have made it without me. She is better now, though, and I really think it had a lot to do with what I went through.”

○○○

“The Lord sent me back, but I don't know why. I definitely felt Him there, and I knew that He recognized me and knew who I was. And yet He didn't see fit to let me into heaven; but why, I don't know. I have thought about it many times since, and I believe that it was either because I had those two small children to raise, or because I personally just wasn't ready to be there. I am still seeking the answer, and I just can't figure it out.”

○○○

“I was with my elderly aunt during her last illness, which was very drawn out. I helped take care of her, and all that time everyone in the family was praying for her to regain her health. She stopped breathing several times, but they brought her back. Finally, one day she looked at me and she said, “Joan, I have been over there, over to the beyond and it is beautiful over there. I want to stay with you, but I can't as long as you keep praying for me to stay with you. Your prayers are holding me over here. Please don't pray any more.” We did all stop, and shortly after that she died.”

○○○

“The doctor had already said that I was gone, but I lived through it. Yet, the experience I had been through was so joyous. I had no bad feelings at all. As I came back, I opened my eyes, and my sister and my husband saw me. I could see their relief, and tears were pouring from their eyes. I could see that it was a relief to them that I did survive. I felt as though I had been called back – magnetized back – through the love of my sister and my husband. Since then, I have believed that other people can draw you back.”

○○○

“I don't remember getting back into my body. It was like I just drifted away, went to sleep, and then all of a sudden I woke right back up and was lying in the bed. The people in the room were, in comparison, where they had been while I had been out of my body, looking at it and at them.”

○○○

“I was up there at the ceiling, watching them work on me. When they put the shocks on my chest, and my body jumped up, I just fell right back down to my body, just like dead weight. The next thing I knew, I was in my body again.”

○○○

“And I decided that I would come back, and when I did, it was like a jolt, like a jolt back into my body, and I felt that at that very moment I crossed back over into life.”

○○○

“My “being” seemed to have a small end and a large end, and at the end of my accident, after it had just hung suspended over my head, it came back in. When it left my body, it seemed that the large end left first, but coming back in, the small end seemed to come in first.”

○○○

“When I saw them pick up my body and take it out from under the steering wheel, it was just like a swoosh and I felt like I was drawn through a limited area, a kind of tunnel, I guess. It was dark and black in there, and I moved through it quickly, back to my body. And I was being sucked back, it seemed that the suction started from the head, like I went into the head. I didn't feel that I had any say-so about it at all, nor even any time to think about it. I was there, yards away from my body, and all of a sudden, it was over with. I didn't even have time to think, “I'm being sucked back into my body.””

○○○

“After I came back, I cried off and on for about a week because I had to live in this world after seeing that one. I didn't want to come back.”

○○○

“When I came back, I brought with me some of the wonderful feelings I had over there. They lasted for several days. Even now I feel them sometimes.”

○○○

“This feeling was so indescribable. It has stayed with me, in a way. I've never forgotten it. I still think about it very often.”

TELLING OTHERS

“While I was out of my body, I was really amazed at what was happening to me. I couldn't understand it. But it was real. I saw my body so plainly, and from so far away. My mind wasn't at that point where I wanted to make things happen or make up anything. My mind wasn't manufacturing ideas. I wasn't in that state of mind.”

○○○

“It was nothing like an hallucination. I have had hallucinations once, when I was given codeine in the hospital. But that had happened long before the accident which really killed me. And this experience was nothing like the hallucinations, nothing like them at all.”

○○○

“It was very interesting. It's just that I don't like telling people about it. People just kind of look at you like you're crazy.”

○○○

“I didn't tell anyone about it for a long, long time. I just didn't say anything at all about it. I felt funny about it because I was afraid that nobody would think I was telling the truth, that they would say, “Oh, you're making up these things.”

One day, I decided, “Well, I'll see how my family reacts to it,” and I told them, but never anyone else until now. But I think that my family realized that I had been that far.”

○○○

“The only person I tried to tell was my mother. Just a little later I mentioned to her how I had felt. But I was just a little boy, and she didn't pay any attention to me. So I never told it to anybody else.”

○○○

“I tried to tell my minister, but he told me I had been hallucinating, so I shut up.”

○○○

“I was pretty popular in junior high and high school, and I just floated with the crowd, never anything new. I was a follower, not a leader. And after this happened to me, and I tried to tell people, they just automatically labeled me as crazy, I think. I would try to tell people this, and they would listen with interest, but then I would find out later that they'd go say, “She has really flipped out.” When I saw that it was just a big joke, I quit trying communicating about it. I hadn't been trying to get across the idea that, “Gee, this strange experience has happened to me.” What I was trying to say was that there was more we needed to know about life than I had ever thought about, and I am sure they hadn't, either.”

○○○

“I tried to tell my nurses what had happened when I woke up, but they told me not to talk about it, that I was just imaging things.”

○○○

“You learn very quickly that people don't take to this  as easily as you would like for them to. You simply don't jump up on a little soapbox and go around telling everyone these things.”

○○○

“My family and I asked the doctor about what had happened to me, and he said that this happened a lot when a person is in severe pain or has severe injuries, that their soul will leave their body.”

○○○

“It was a very interesting thing to find out that other people have had the same experience, because I hadn't realized... I am actually happy that I have heard this, knowing that obviously someone else has been through this, too. Now I know I'm not crazy.

It was always such a real thing to me, but I never would tell anybody because I was scared that they would look at me and think, “ When you arrested, your mind went bad at the same time!”

I figured out that someone else would've had this same experience, but that I probably never would meet up with anybody who knew another person who had, because I don't think people are going to talk. If somebody were to come up and tell me, without me ever having been there, I would probably look at them and wonder what they were trying to pull over on me, because that's just the way our society is.”

EFFECTS ON LIVES

“At this time – it was before I had gone off to college – I had grown up in a very small town, with very small-minded people, the people I was associated with, anyway. I was a typical high-school fraternity brat. You just weren't “it” unless you belonged to my fraternity.

But after this thing happened to me, I wanted to know more. At the time, though, I didn't think there was a person who would know anything about this, because I had never been out of this little world that I was in. I didn't  know anything about psychology, or anything like that. All I knew was that I felt like I had aged overnight after this happened, because it opened up a whole new world for me that I never knew could possibly exist. I kept thinking, “ There's so much that I've got to find out.” In other words, there's more to life than Friday night movies and the football game. And there's more to me that I don't even know about. And then I started thinking about “What is the limit of the human and of the mind?” It just opened me up to a whole new world.”

○○○

“Since then, it has been on my mind constantly what I have done with my life, and what I will do with my life. My past life – I'm satisfied with it. I don't think the world owes me anything because I really did everything I wanted and I did it the way I wanted to, and I'm still alive and I can do some more. But since I died, all of a sudden, right after my experience, I started wondering whether I had been doing the things I had done because they were good, or because they were good for me. Before, I just reacted off the impulse, and now I run things through my mind first, nice and slow. Everything seem to have to go through my mind and be digested, first.

I try to do things that have more meaning, and that makes my mind and soul feel better. And I try not to be biased, and not to judge people. I want to do things because they are good, not because they are good to me. And it seems that the understanding I have of things now is so much better. I feel like this is because of what happened to me, because of the places I went and the things I saw in this experience.”

○○○

“It was a blessing in a way, because before that heart attack I was too busy planning for my children's future, and worrying about yesterday, and I was losing the joys of the present. I have a much different attitude now.”

○○○

“I was more conscious of my mind at the time than of that physical body. The mind was the most important part, instead of the shape of the body. And before, all my life, it had been exactly reversed. The body was my main interest and what was going on in my mind, well, it was just going on, and that's all. But after this happened, my mind was the main point of attraction, and the body was second – it was only something to encase my mind. I didn't care if I had a body or not. It didn't matter because for all I cared my mind was what was important.”

○○○

“Following this experience, it almost seemed as if I were filled with a new spirit. Since then, many have remarked to me that I seem to have almost a calming effect on them, instantly, when they are troubled. And it seems that I am more in tune with people now, that I can pick up things about them faster.”

○○○

“One thing that I think has been given to me, because of my death experience, is that I can sense the needs in other individual's lives. Often, for instance when I have been with people on the elevator in the office building where I work, it seems I can almost read their faces, and tell that they need help, and what kind. Many times, I have spoken to people who are troubled like this, and have led them into my office counseling.”

○○○

“Since I was hurt, I've had the feeling of picking up people's thoughts and vibrations, and I can feel resentment from other people. I have often been able to pick up what people were going to say before they said it. Not many people will believe me, but I have had some really odd, odd experiences since then. One time, I was at a party and was picking up other people's thoughts, and some people there who didn't know me got up and left. They were scared that I was a witch or something. I don't know if it is something I picked up while I was dead, or if it was there dormant and I never did use it until after this happened.”

NEW VIEWS OF DEATH

“I suppose this experience molded something in my life. I was only a child when it happened, only ten, but now, my entire life through, I am thoroughly convinced that there is life after death, without  a shadow of a doubt, and I am not afraid to die. I am not. Some people I have known are so afraid, so scared. I always smile to myself when I hear people doubt that there is an afterlife or say, “When you're dead, you're gone.” I think to myself, “They really don't know.”

I've had many things happen to me in my life. In business, I've had a gun pulled on me and put to my temple. And it didn't frighten me very much, because I thought, “Well, if I really die, if they really kill me, I know I'll still live somewhere.””

○○○

“When I was a little boy I used to dread dying. I used to wake up at night crying and having a fit. My mother and father would rush into the bedroom and ask what was wrong. I told them that I didn't want to die, but that I knew I had to, and asked if they could stop it. My mother would talk to me and tell me, “No, that's just the way it is and we all have to face it.” She said that we all had to do it alone and that when the time came we would do it all right. And years later after my mother died I would talk about death with my wife. I still feared it. I didn't want it to come.

But since this experience, I don't fear death . Those feelings vanished. I don't feel bad at funerals anymore. I kind of rejoice of them, because I know what the dead person has been through.

I believe that the Lord may have sent this experience to me because of the way I felt about death. Of course, my parents comforted me, but the Lord showed me, whereas they couldn't do that. Now, I don't talk about all this, but I know, and I am perfectly satisfied.”

○○○

“Now, I am not afraid to die. It's not that I have a death wish, or want to die right now. I don't want to be living over there on the other side now, because I'm supposed to be living here. The reason why I'm not afraid to die, though, is that I know where I'm going when I leave here, because I've been there before.”

○○○

“The last thing the light said to me, before I came back to my body, back to life, was – well, what it boiled down to was that he would be back. He was telling me that I was going to go on and live this time, but that there would be a time when he would be getting in touch with me again, and that I would actually die.

So I know that the light will come back, and the voice, but as to when, I'm not sure. I think that it'll be a very similar experience, but I think a better one, really, since now I know what to expect and won't be so confused. I don't think I want to go back anytime soon, though. I still want to do some things down here.”

○○○

“Some say that we are not using the word “death” because we are trying to escape from it. That's not true in my case. After you've once had the experience that I had, you know in your heart that there's no such thing as death. You just graduate from one thing to another – like from grammar school to high school to college.”

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“Life is like imprisonment. In this state, we just can't understand what prisons these bodies are. Death is such a release – like an escape from prison. That's the best thing I can think of to compare it to.”

CORROBORATION

“After it was all over, the doctor told me that I had a really bad time, and I said, “Yeah, I know.” he said, “Well, how do you know?” and I said, “I can tell you everything that happened.” He didn't believe me, so I told him the whole story, from the time I stopped breathing until the time I was kind of coming around. He was really shocked to know that I knew everything that had happened. He didn't know quite what to say, but he came in several times to ask me different things about it.”

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“When I woke up after the accident, my father was there, and I didn't even want to know what sort of shape I was in, or how I was, or how the doctors thought I would be. All I wanted to talk about was the experience I had been through. I told my father who had dragged my body out of the building, and even what color clothes that person had on, and how they got me out, and even about all the conversation that had been going on in the area. And my father said, “Well, yes, these things were true.” Yet, my body was physically out of this whole time, and there was no way I could have seen or heard these things without being outside of my body.”

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“At the time this happened I suffered, as I still do, with a very severe case of bronchial asthma and emphysema. One day, I got into a coughing fit and apparently ruptured a disk in a lower part of my spine. For a couple of months, I consulted a number of doctors for the agonizing pain, and finally one of them referred me to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Wyatt. He saw me and told me that I needed to be admitted to the hospital immediately, so I went on in and they put me in traction right away.

Dr. Wyatt knew that I had bad respiratory diseases so he called in a lung specialist, who said that the anaesthesiologist, Dr. Coleman, should be consulted if I was going to be put to sleep. So the lung specialist worked on me for almost three weeks until he finally got me to a place where Dr. Coleman would put me under. He finally consented on a Monday, although he was very much worried about it. They scheduled the operation for the next Friday. Monday night, I went to sleep and had a restful sleep until sometime early Tuesday morning, when I woke up in severe pain. I turned over and tried to get in a more comfortable position, but just at that moment alight appeared in the corner of the room, just below the ceiling. It was just a ball of light, almost like a globe, and it was not very large, I would say no more than twelve to fifteen inches in diameter, and as this light appeared, a feeling came over me. I can't say that it was an eerie feeling, because it was not. It was a feeling of complete peace and utter relaxation. I could see a hand reach down for me from the light, and the light said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.” So immediately, without any hesitation whatsoever, I reached up with my hands and grabbed onto a hand I saw. As I did, I had the feeling of being drawn up and of leaving my body, and I looked back and I saw it lying there on the bed while I was going up towards the ceiling of the room.

Now, at this time, as soon as I left my body, I took on the same form as the light. I got the feeling, and I'll have to use my own words for it, because I've never heard anyone talk about anything like this, that this form was definitely a spirit. It wasn't a body, just a wisp of smoke or a vapor. It looked almost like the clouds of cigarette smoke you can see when they are illuminated as they drift around a lamp. The form I took had colors, though. There was orange, yellow, and a color that was very indistinct to me – I took it to be an indigo, a bluish color.

This spiritual form didn't have a shape like a body. It was more or less circular, but it had what I would call a hand. I know this because when the light reached down for me, I reached up for it with my hand. Yet, the arm and hand f my body just stayed put, because I could see them lying on the bed, down by the side of my body, as I rose up to the light. But when I wasn't using this spiritual hand, the spirit went back to the circular pattern.

So, I was drawn up to the same position the light was in, and we started moving through the ceiling and the wall of the hospital room, into the corridor, and through the corridor, down through the floors it seemed, on down to a lower floor in the hospital. We had no difficulty in passing through doors or walls. They just would fade away from us as we would approach them.

During this period it seemed that we were travelling. I knew we were moving, yet there was no sensation of speed. And in a moment, almost instantaneously, really, I realized that we had reached the recovery room of the hospital. Now, I hadn't even known where the recovery room was at this hospital, but we got there, and again, we were in the corner of the room near the ceiling, up above everything else. I saw the doctors and nurses walking around in their green suits and saw the beds that were placed around in there.

This being then told me – he showed me - “That's where you're going to be. When they bring you off the operating table they're going to put you ion that bed, but you will never awaken from that position. You'll know nothing after you go to the operation room until I come back to get you sometime after this.” Now, I won't say this was in words. It wasn't like an audible voice, because if it had been I would have expected the others in the room to have heard the voice, and they didn't it. It was more of an impression that came to me. But it was in such a vivid form that there was no way for me to say I didn't hear it or I didn't feel it. It was definite to me.

And what I was seeing – well, it was so much easier to recognize things while I was in this spiritual form. I was now wondering, like, “Now, what is that that he is trying to show me.” I knew immediately what it was, what he had in mind. There was no doubt. It was that that bed – it was the bed on the right just as you come in from the corridor – is where I'm going to be and he's brought me here for a purpose. And then he told me why. It came to me that the reason for this was that he didn't want any fear when the time came that my spirit passed from my body, but he wanted me to know what the sensation would be on passing that point. He wanted to assure me so that I wouldn't be afraid, because he was telling me that he wouldn't be there immediately, that I would go through other things first, but that he would be overshadowing everything that happened and would be there for me at the end.

Now, immediately, when I had joined him to take the trip to the recovery room and had become a spirit myself, in a way we had been fused into one. We were two separate ones, too, of course. Yet, he had full control of everything that was going on as far as I was concerned. And even if we were travelling through the walls and ceilings and so forth, well, it just seemed that we were in such close communion that nothing whatsoever could have bothered me. Again, it was just a peacefulness, calmness, and a serenity that have never been found anywhere else.

So, after he told me this, he took me back to my hospital room, and as I got back I saw my body again, still lying in the same position as when we left, and instantaneously I was back in my body. I would guess that I had been out of my body for five or ten minutes, but passage of time had nothing to do with this experience. In fact, I don't remember if I have ever even thought of it as being any particular time.

Now, this whole thing had just astounded me, took me completely by surprise. It was so vivid and real – more so than ordinary experience. And the next morning, I was not in the least afraid. When I  shaved, I noticed that my hand didn't shake like it had been doing for six or eight weeks before then. I knew that I would be dying, and there was no regret, no fear. There was no thought, “What can I do to keep this from happening?” I was ready.

Now, on Thursday afternoon, the day before the operation the next morning, I was in my hospital room, and I was worried. My wife and I have a boy, an adopted nephew, and we were then having some trouble with him. So I decided to write a letter to my wife and one to my nephew, putting some of my worries in words, and to hide the letters where they wouldn't be found  until after the operation. After I had written about two pages on the letter to my wife, it was just as if the floodgates had opened. All at once, I broke out in tears, sobbing. I felt a presence, and at first I thought maybe that I had cried so loud that I had disturbed one of the nurses, and that they had come in to see what was the matter with me. But I hadn't heard the door open. And again I felt this presence, but I didn't see any light this time, and thoughts or words came to me, just as before, and he said, “Jack, why are you crying? I thought you would be pleased to be with me.” I thought, “Yes, I am. I want to go very much.” And the voice said, “Then why are you crying?” I said, “We've had trouble with our nephew, you know, and I'm afraid my wife won't know how to raise him. I'm trying to put into words how I feel, and what I want her to try to do for him. I'm concerned, too, because I feel that maybe my presence could have settled him down some.”

Then the thoughts came to me, from the presence, “Since you are asking for someone else, and thinking of others, not Jack, I will grant what you want. You will live until you see your nephew become a man.” And just liked that, it was gone. I stopped crying, and I destroyed the letter so my wife wouldn't accidentally find it.

That evening, Dr. Coleman came in and told me that he was expecting a lot of trouble with putting me to sleep, and for me not to be surprised to wake up and find a lot of wires and tubes and machines all around me. I didn't tell him what I had experienced, so I just nodded and said I would cooperate.

The next morning the operation took a long time but went fine, and as I was regaining my consciousness, Dr. Coleman was there with me, and I told him, “I know exactly where I am.” he asked, “What bed are you in?” I said, “I'm in that first bed on the right just as you come in from the hall.” He just kind of laughed, and of course, he thought that I was just talking from the anesthetic.

I wanted to tell him what had happened, but just in a moment Dr. Wyatt came in and said, “He's awake now. What do you want to do?” And Dr. Coleman said, “There's not a thing I can do. I've never been so amazed in my life. Here I am with all this equipment set up and he doesn't need a thing.” Dr. Wyatt said, “Miracles still happen, you know.” So, when I could get up in the bed, and see around the room, I saw that I was in that same bed that the light had shown me several days before.

Now, all this was three years ago, but it is still just as vivid as it wad then. It was the most fantastic thing that has ever happened to me, and it has made a big difference. But I don't talk about it. I have only told my wife, my brother, my minister, and now you. I don't know how to say it, but this is so hard to explain. I'm not trying to make a big explosion in your life, and I'm not trying to brag. It's just that after this, I don't have any doubts anymore. I know there is life after death.”

OTHER NDE EPISODES

“Still man does not die, but is only separated from the corporeal part which was of use to him in the world... Man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another.”

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“I was brought into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of the dying; yet the interior life with thought remaining entire, so that I perceived and retained in memory the things which occurred, and which occur to those who are resuscitated from the dead... Especially it was given to perceive... that there was a drawing and... pulling of... mind, thus, of my spirit, from the body.”

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“Those angels first inquired what my thoughts was, whether it was like the thought of those who die, which is usually about eternal life; and that they wished to keep my mind in that thought.”

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“Whereas spirits converse with each other by a universal language... Every man, immediately after death, comes into this universal language... which is proper to his spirit...

The speech of an angel or of a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as a speech of a man with a man; yet it is not heard by others who stand near, but by himself alone; the reason is, because the speech of an angel or spirit flows first into the man's thought...”

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“The first state of man after death is similar to his state in the world, because then in like manner he is in externals... Hence, he knows no otherwise than that he is still in the world... Therefore, after they have wondered that they are in a body, and in every sense which they had in the world... they come into a desire of knowing what heaven is, and what hell is.”

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“All the faculties of spirits... are in a more perfect state, as well their sensations as their thoughts are perceptions.”

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“The spirit of man recently departed from the world is... recognized by his friends, and by those whom he had known in the world... wherefore they are instructed by their friends concerning the state of eternal life...”

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“The interior memory... is such that there are inscribed in it all the particular things... which man has at any time thought, spoken, and done... from his earliest infancy to extreme old age. Man has with him the memory of all these things when he comes into another life, and is successively brought into all recollection of them... All that he had spoken and done... are made manifest before the angels, in a light as clear as day... and there is nothing so concealed in the world that it is not manifested after death... as if seen in effigy, when the spirit is viewed in the light of heaven.”

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“I didn't go where [my wife] was. I went to an awful place... I immediately saw the mistake I had made... I thought, “I wish I hadn't done it.””

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“[While I was over there] I got the feeling that two things it was completely forbidden for me to do would be to kill myself or to kill another person...

If I were to commit suicide, I would be throwing God's gift back in his face... Killing somebody else would be interfering with God's purpose for that individual.”

If you would like to hear or find out more about Dr. R. Moody's research on the near-death experiences, you should get his book titled Life After Life.

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